Social Media Marketing 101: Calculating Your Campaign’s ROI

Social media is one of the most important digital marketing aspects of any businesses. Most companies are maximizing platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to connect to other organizations, communicate to their target market, and strengthen their brand awareness.

According to the 2014 Social Media Marketing Report, 92 percent of marketers place a high importance on social media for their enterprise, which is 86 percent higher than in 2013. Creating a social media account for your business does not guarantee that you can gain success out of it. The most effective way to know if your social campaigns are working is by calculating the Return of Investment (ROI), but how do you do it?

This article will guide you through the process of measuring your social campaign’s ROI.

First: Set a goal

Different companies will have different marketing campaigns and strategies, thus expect a varied conversion goal for each business. However, one element that is common among all companies – they all want customers to undertake an action that will lead to a monetary value to their business afterwards. Here are some of the most common conversion goals of many enterprises:

1. Purchase your products and/or services online
2. Sign up for newsletter
3. Click on the URL to be redirected to the dealer’s website
4. Fill out customer’s contact form
5. Generate more social media interaction via Share, Like, or Follow

Second: Track conversion and genuine traffic

Monitoring conversions of your social media campaign will depend on the platform you opt to choose, as there are various tools available online. The best way is to use Google Analytics and some of the top free social media tracking tools, such as HootSuite, TweetReach, Social Mention, and Topsy to gather all the data you need. Here are your top social media metrics:

• Reach: The more social followers you have, the higher the ROI.
• Traffic: Getting more visitors to your website that you can later on convert into clients.
• Leads: The number of people that expresses interest in your brand.
• Customers: Tracking the number and rate of social media-generated leads that become your actual customers.
• Conversion rate: Monitoring the percentage of social media page visitors that became sales over those that do not become your customers.

Third: Real-time monitoring

Mobile devices have paved the way for marketers to track their ROI, even when they are on the go. In fact, six in 10 surveyed by Evolve IP said that their device assist them in gathering critical business information in real-time, such as their social media data and online marketing campaign report.

In particular, tablets became the highly preferred device by entrepreneurs, since it gives them a bigger screen to work with. Based on the list provided by O2, tablets display ranges from 7- to 10-inch, however the most ideal screen for work purposes is the 9-inch with the bigger screen. These devices will be highly effective in your quest to measure your campaigns’ success in real-time.

Lastly: Measure and adjust social media campaigns

After collecting all your numbers and data from your online tools, you will have to analyze the social channels that bring great conversion to your business, and evaluate the adjustment you will need to do in your campaigns. You will need to continue working on platforms that have a high conversion rate, and work harder by changing strategies on social mediums that do not create an impressive ROI.

Tracking ROI of social marketing campaigns is not all about proving how valuable your strategies are to your company, but also how to improve non-working campaigns as soon as possible. Take note that social media campaigns must never be stagnant as it has a short lifecycle, requiring marketers to always adopt latest trends and marketing tactics to keep themselves on top of the game.

The guideline we have provided will help you in measuring the success of your campaign, as well as determine which part of your strategies are not working so far. It will help you to read: How to correct a social media mishap – to understand the next step you need to do when you have committed a public faux pas. How do you boost your ROI through social media?